INTERVIEW
YOUR HORSE MAGAZINE meets
The widow of event rider Matthew Wright tells Julie Harding how her children and running the mental health charity Riders Minds have given her a purpose since his death from suicide in 2021
VICTORIA WRIGHT REMEMBERS the week after her husband, event rider Matthew, took his own life as being “surreal”.
She wasn’t aware of the date, let alone whether it was a Tuesday or a Thursday. She shunned all food, and she barely spoke, not to the family and friends who came to offer condolences, support and practical help, nor to the funeral directors and nor to the police, who arrived at her barn conversion home near Retford to investigate this sudden, unspeakably tragic, unexpected death as they would any suicide. It was only towards the end of the worst week of her life that something her eight-year-old daughter, Isabella, said prompted an emergence from the deep foggy darkness.
“Isabella put her arms around me and said: ‘Don’t worry, mum, I’ll look after you.’ That’s when I thought, ‘pull yourself together. I have to look after you’. The children were so young then, and I knew that they needed to think that life was still positive. I didn’t want them to end up with the problems Matthew had suffered. They needed to have a normal life.”
Matthew Wright was just 38 years old when, on 15 February 2021, he could see no way forward. Victoria sees the combination of the isolation of the Covid pandemic, a broken knee caused by a fall that had kept him from the saddle, a deep dive in his mental health — which he had struggled with, in yo-yo fashion, his entire life — and a horror of being sectioned as the elements that all came together and led to his actions on that day.
“Matthew came across as a normal man, but he was always insecure and he thought poor mental health was a sign of weakness. He was also a proud person and too proud to ask for help even though he needed it from a young age. He didn’t ever want to go to the GP for pills,” says Victoria. “He was in the horse world from such a young age and I think the industry is so tough and cruel. No one is geared up for how tough it actually is. For kids these days with social media to deal with, it’s even harder.
“Matthew’s problems escalated until his wall was so high. I always knew when he was low, and he would let me in, but some days he wouldn’t even get out of bed and supporting someone like that was so hard. He was so ill at the end that we didn’t even talk about it. I speak at events now and I’m open about sharing our story because so many people don’t talk. We brushed talk. things under the carpet. We kept the everything quiet and when Matthew had taken his own lif
